NEW DELHI: Online eyewear portal Lenskart recently enabled users to try glasses on realistic 3D models of themselves just by clicking a selfie using their webcams. Similarly, online jewellery platform CaratLane's buyers can use its mobile application to see how its products will look on them before placing an order.

Now, a growing number of apparel e-tailers are opting for virtual fitting rooms on their platforms, improving customer experience to beat competition.

Hemanth Satyanarayana, founder and chief executive of Hyderabad-based Dres-.sy said queries about the company's virtual plug-and-play fitting room from potential customers have increased by 50% in the last two months. Even the Aditya Birla Group has shortlisted it to pilot a try-on feature for its online arm, Trendin.com, he said.

For those competing with giants in the online space, virtual try-on technology is no fancy feature but a must in the fast changing Indian online landscape.

"It's not like a choice," said Sujayath Ali, CEO and co-founder of Voonik, which sells fashion products for women "You will be going down if you aren't competent on the visual experience."

Voonik has been using virtual dressing room app TrialKart, which it recently bought out, to enable its mobile app users to see how its clothes would look on them. It has also been working with four other technology companies to enable features like image recognition and tagging.

Even online boutique marketplace Violet-Street has introduced a 'Made-to-Measure' feature that allows users to enter their metrics into a grey 3D model. While it doesn't allow users to 'try on' the clothes right now, the platform's in-house team hopes to enable it soon. Plans are also underway to make the model more realistic by accurately visualizing the user's face and body, according to co-creator Ankur Gupta.

While apparel e-tailers ET spoke with were tight-lipped about the investment in such features, companies already offering virtual try-ons said the requirement is large. "We invested millions of dollars in getting this as close to reality as possible," said Lenskart founder and CEO Peyush Bansal about its 3D try-on feature.

Carat-Lane, too, considers its 3D earring try-on technology to be one of its single biggest technology investments in the recent past. "For a company of a fairly decent scale, if you have Rs 30 lakh in your pocket, you can get started for about a year," said Sriram Ganesh, chief executive of augmented reality and gesture-based technology company Whodat, giving a bare-minimum cost required to hire companies like his for such services.

"What you'll essentially get is someone who will build the app for you and maintain it regularly." Lenskart and CaratLane believe it is early to correlate their addition of 'try-on' technology with customer response, but have reported positive results in their sales of late. "We are doing closely 2,800 trials a day now and conversion is more than 25%," said Lenskart's Bansal.

"Around 20% of all our online transactions happen through the app now," said CaratLane's senior vice-president of marketing, Atul Sinha. Compared to the conversions it sees online, the portal's conversion rate through the app is more than twofold, he said. However, not every -ecommerce company is jumping on the virtual try-on bandwagon.

Snapdeal, which tested the concept for free with Dres.sy last year, said it isn't working on any such projects. According to fashion e-tailer Myntra, neither the technology nor the tools to use them are fully developed. "When they do (become mass products), I think it'll become very important for e-commerce just because it's so much easier to visualize the product that you're buying," said Shamik Sharma, chief technology and product officer at Myntra.

Meanwhile, the platform's technology team is developing a feature to make size recommendations based on customer input on what fits them in their favourite brands, he said.

Analysts say such features are in their nascent stage and may pick up in the coming years. "People having entry-level smart phones may not have enough memory, processing power, resolution of their screens and streaming capacity," said Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail advisory firm Technopak.

Sponsored Stories

Subscribe to our Newsletters

In an interview with ETCIO, Kedar Upadhye, Jt President & Global CFO, Cipla, throws light on some innovative IT projects that Cipla has implemented,as part of its digital transformation strategy, to fuel business growth.

Sudhanshu Pokhriyal, President of Textiles at Raymond, firmly believes that digital transformation is a top-down approach. Taking the lead on the initiative, he has devised an innovative digital strategy that enhances customer experience while helping retailers in their business.